


it's a bad idea, me and you.

by winterwinterwinter



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-01-12 06:50:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18441275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwinterwinter/pseuds/winterwinterwinter
Summary: wrench is dangerous. grady knows wrench is dangerous.





	1. chapter one.

**i.**

 

every day was the same.

grady slowly blinked awake. the clock over the television read roughly 11:30. the living room was dark around him, and the kitchen was too. the television volume had been turned down to a low mumble. pbs, like always. the only kind of tv grady could really stand anymore - simple, informative, straight to the point. he had even considered donating in the past year.

the tv flickered blue against him as he struggled to his feet. it’d been an early night for him. ken burns’s _baseball_ was on and he’d fallen asleep on the couch before diana had even finished making dinner. he shuffled into the kitchen and blearily peered into the microwave. dinner - now tomorrow’s lunch - peered back at him. _should put that in the fridge,_ he thought as he turned and walked away.

he skulked over to the bedroom, its door ajar, where he saw diana curled up on her side, both the comforter and the quilt piled on top of her. he stood there a moment, watching her, both of them motionless.

he went down to the basement next. theirs was small, and in it stood the washer and dryer and a tall, old filing cabinet in the corner, which grady approached after a paranoid glance over his shoulder. _she’s asleep,_ he thought. _don’t be an ass._ he opened the top drawer and reached in, digging around under the files until his hand fell upon an old flip phone. he opened it. one new message, it read. 10 PM.

 _coming out tonight?_ the message said.

grady closed it, answer enough not to answer. and tucked it back between the files. if he didn’t get to sleep soon, he wouldn’t wake up in time to shower before work.

he was careful not to disturb diana as he tucked himself in beside her, but she stirred anyway.

“mm. grady?” she mumbled. “you put the food in the fridge?”

“yeah,” he lied. “go back to sleep.”

grady rolled onto his belly, as far from diana as he could be without falling off. diana shifted across the bed until she was pressed against him, curled up against his side. he felt her sigh and managed to hold back his own.

grady fell into his usual fitful sleep. he was late to work in the morning.

  


**ii.**

 

“fuck, you feel good.”

grady grunted. he didn’t like talkers, but more often than not those were the guys that picked him out of the crowd and bought him drinks.

the guy - woodrow? woody? something awful and on-the-nose like that - slid his hands down and around, digging into grady’s thighs as he fucked into him. grady was so out of it, so turned off, that all he could really focus on was that if the guy were to wriggle his fingers _just so,_ grady would fall into fits of laughter. he tried to focus, tried to zero in on the guy’s dick driving into him, but he was too far gone. he’d have to finish himself off later, or maybe not at all - his erection had flagged impressively.

the guy tried to give him a kiss when he finished. grady smiled and ducked out of his way. “no thanks, buddy,” he said, hands palm-up and defensive. “not your girlfriend.”

“ah, fuck you,” the guy said, half-scowling. he left grady there in the bathroom stall to clean himself up and put himself away.

grady’s flip phone buzzed when he finished buckling his belt. _did u leave?_ it read. _not having any luck._

 _me either. gonne leave,_ grady replied before washing his hands.

_see u when?_

_don’t know,_ grady said.

in the early days, grady would cry as he drove home, thinking about diana and what he was doing behind her back, thinking about what a monster he turned out to be. now, he drove home stoically, eyes dry and face blank. a slow, mellow song he liked came on the radio - _sometimes i feel so happy, sometimes i feel so sad, but mostly you just make me mad._ he paused, then reached out and cranked it.

  


**iii.**

 

grady’s stepfather, lawrence, greeted then. “come in, come in!” he said too loud. “maggie!” he shouted back into the house.

once a week, grady and diana went to grady’s mother’s house to meet with the other levins for dinner: grady’s brother harry and his miserable wife maryanne, grady’s sister rachael and her miserable husband trevor. nieces and nephews, each shrieking louder than the last as they fight over broken toys.

lawrence threw an arm over either of their shoulders. “thank goodness it’s almost friday, right, kids?” he said. diana mumbled an agreement. grady ignored him. “oh, i’ve missed you both since last week!”

grady couldn’t stand his stepfather’s enthusiasm. it gave him a headache; before the night was through he’d be rifling through his mother’s medicine cabinet, forgoing an outdated bottle of xanax and a near-ancient bottle of his old ritalin for some aspirin to calm his ringing head. lawrence was the kind of man who would thank you for rear-ending him, the kind who would return a lost wallet without first pocketing the cash.

“grady!” his mother said, clicking from the kitchen to the foyer. she kissed the top of his head. “and diana…” she kissed her temple. “finally. right, lawrence? the others have been here for hours, sweetheart.”

“hours,” lawrence parroted.

once dinner was served, grady sat between diana and his mother, across from harry and rachael. when he’d suffered through nearly half his salad (limp, flavorless, misery in a bowl), the questions started.

the questions were the worst part of every weekly dinner - always directed at grady, and only grady. one from almost everyone at the table: mom, lawrence, harry, maryanne, rachael, and trevor. every once-in-a-while the children would even chime in - “why do you look so tired?” “why don’t you ever smile, uncle grady?” “why don’t you and aunty hold hands?” “what’s your favorite color?” it was a perverse little interrogation, a routine that had grady resenting everyone at the table even more than usual.

“so,” his mother started, nudging at his foot under the table with her own, “grady. have you thought about what i said last week?”

“what did you say?” grady said, keeping his eyes down and on his bowl.

“so you haven’t,” she said, punctuating with an indignant little noise.

grady was happy to forget about it until rachael spoke. “she’s talking about you buying a house,” she said. “you know you can’t raise kids in that little rental, right, grady?”

grady felt a rare stab of guilt and just barely held himself back from glancing at diana, who he felt tense beside him. kids. kids were always the subject of their fights. diana wanted them desperately - of course she did. harry had three, rachael had two, diana’s own sisters had four apiece for some reason. rachael was even pregnant again, and for the past five four months grady couldn't pretend he hadn't noticed diana staring at her with a blatant jealousy in her eyes. diana wanted them bad. but grady didn’t. not at all. it was the only thing grady seemed to feel guilty over anymore - that he couldn’t make it all easier for her by just giving her what she wanted.

“really, rachael?” grady said, smiling bitterly up at his sister, who was glaring at him over the top of her glass of water - figures she was pissy, she was pregnant again after all, resigned to five more months sober. “really, i-i didn’t know that, you know. thanks for letting me know that our place is too small for kids.” she rolled her eyes.

“so,” lawrence said, coughing. “you kids, uh. s-speaking of little ones, you kids trying?”

“i wish,” grady barely heard diana mumble. his mind supplied the rest: _jerk-off hasn’t had sex with me in nearly two months._ it had been awful, the last time. neither of them had gotten what they wanted, and it ended in another shouting match.

“no,” grady said.

“i think you should go back to school before you start trying,” harry said in a definitive, final sort of tone. he was the oldest, and he always acted like it. nearly everything he said had a heavy sort of authority in it. “really. office job’s not doing anything for you. and sitting in front of computers all day isn’t good for your health. did you think about what i said last week?”

“i don’t want to be a rabbi, harry,” grady said.

“what do you want, grady?” trevor said, tone light and amicable. between trevor and maryanne, grady much preferred trevor. he was quiet, and tended to keep to himself, and all the kids loved him, which did make grady’s heart go a little soft at the edges. it was hard to hate a man who was good with kids the way trevor was.

“well,” grady said, sitting back in his chair, “i wanna go home and watch the next part of baseball on pbs.” he gestured with his fork and winked dryly at his brother-in-law.

grady and diana went home half an hour later, without dessert, without aspirin, and he did just that.

  


**iv.**

 

on monday, it all started over. or - grady thought it was starting over. his life had been a locked groove for two years, an endless loop of the same, forever. why would he ever expect it to change?

but on monday, it changed. for some reason, everything changed.

 

**v.**

 

it was about an hour to lunch when the office door in front of grady’s cubicle burst open and two thugs walked in. the office was silent in a moment. even the phones seemed to stop ringing on a dime as they crossed the threshold.

grady couldn’t take his eyes off the pair of them. he wanted to, god - he didn’t want to catch one of their eyes and be the first to bite it, if that was what it was. he wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. and he couldn't deny the electricity that pulsed through his body. this was the first exciting thing to happen to him in - _too long,_ he thought.

he was able to relax, just a little bit, when he realized they were unarmed. one of them was tall and handsome, standing ramrod straight and wearing a curious brown suede jacket with fringe hanging off the arms, the chest, everywhere; the other was standing a little stooped, shoulders sloping downward. he was much more inconspicuous in his dress, wearing plain, dark clothes and shoes. he bore such a strong resemblance to the man beside him that grady immediately assumed they were brothers.

they both passed their eyes over the office spread out before them, like twin lighthouses. the tall one lingered on grady, less than five feet between them. he tugged on his brother’s sleeve and pointed over at grady. he raised his hands and, in a move that had grady blinking hard in disbelief, signed _look at him._

grady’s stomach seemed to simultaneously drop and soar. he could do with some excitement, sure, but he didn't want trouble. _what about me?_ he thought.

 _is that him?_ the brother said.

 _no,_ the tall one said, _but look at him. he’s cute._

 _not talking about this,_ the brother said. _where’s the guy?_

grady watched as the tall one produced a manila folder and from the folder pulled a photo that grady didn’t have a good angle on. the brother studied the photo, looking out over the rows of cubicles before grunting. the pair of them stalked off toward the far corner, near the windows. “philip…,” grady heard glynnis off to his left mumble.

philip horowitz was a man, nothing more and nothing less. rotund, balding, with a young daughter who always sat bored in the break room on “bring your daughter to work day.” he’d tried to ask grady about his plans for rosh hashanah once, a big dumb grin on his mustachioed mouth. grady had glared as hard as he could and said “i don’t practice anymore.” since then, philip horowitz had given grady a wide berth.

grady tried to ogle at his coworkers - glynnis and richard to the left, martha and lucille to the right - but he couldn’t see much. they all seemed to disappear behind their cubicle walls, trying to bring as little attention to themselves as they could. he stared straight ahead then, eyes locked on his computer screen. he could hear horowitz struggling, grunting, heard the smack of hands on hands, heard what must have been the voice of the brother translating in a flat, bored tone: “you got cocky, you thought we wouldn’t find out. you should know better - we have eyes everywhere, philip.”

horowitz yelped, and grady heard a laugh. he heard those two sets of footsteps again, muffled by the shitty office carpet, and as they got closer he realized that they would be passing by his cubicle again to get to the door. he dropped his gaze lower, down to his keyboard, but even so -

the footsteps stopped right when they were at their closest. grady didn’t want to look, but he could just feel the pair of them looming over him. he felt small, in their shadows, shrunken in his seat. he could feel glynnis and martha’s eyes on him. again, there were hands on hands, smacking, slapping. he traced home row with his eyes.

“what?” the brother mumbled. “no…”

grady chanced a glance upward and saw them standing there, staring back at him. the brother, the interpreter, was squinting at him. he had an awful, rough look: there were heavy bags under his eyes and a scar off to the side of his face, a bandage on the opposite cheek. the deaf one was looking at him with a darkness in his eyes, hard and impenetrable. grady swallowed, and realized he was paralyzed, frozen in place.

the deaf guy looked at his brother, who looked back at him. _do it,_ he said.

the brother grimaced. _i’m not picking this guy up for you,_ he said. a crack of thunder, a shock of fear, raced through grady’s body. _picking up?_ he thought. _like sex?  
_

_you used to use me to get women all the time,_ the deaf guy said.

 _so sex,_ grady thought definitively. he certainly wouldn't find himself kicking the guy out of bed. he was awful easy on the eyes. but the pair of them had just walked into grady's workplace and threatened one of his coworkers, and grady had heard them do it. they had all heard them, seen them.

 _i’m not doing this. can’t believe you’re trying to shit where you eat,_ the brother said, taking one last look at grady with disgust in his eyes before turning and stalking out the glass door.

tension was still heavy in the office with the deaf one standing there, and it was still so silent. grady was sitting behind his computer, tucked tightly into his cubicle, his heart racing and his face white-hot under the deaf guy’s looming figure and heavy gaze. the guy mimed writing then - not a sign, but a gesture. something he clearly thought grady would understand.

grady sprang into action, practically throwing a post-it note and pen at the guy. he looked amused by grady’s haste, a little twinkle dancing in his eyes as he looked him up and down again with no less heat than before. he scribbled across the paper, and when he was done, he carefully reached into grady’s cubicle and stuck the note on grady’s computer monitor. grady kept his eyes on the guy, watching as he confidently strode back through the door.

only when the glass door had settled back into its frame in his wake, only after the rest of the office clicked back to life - fingers on keyboards, phones going off in high chirpy tones - did grady shift his eyes to the post-it clinging to his monitor. scrawled across it was a phone number. underneath it was written _text, don’t call._


	2. chapter two.

**vi.**

 

it was tuesday night, midnight edging closer with each minute. grady was sitting on the basement stairs, bouncing his leg and restlessly running his hand through his hair, making it greasier with each pass. in his other hand was his burner.

grady was scared. he was scared of what would happen if he texted the number that tall brute had left on his desk. scared of what would happen if he didn’t. he stared down at the flip phone in his hand, his wife sleeping obliviously above him. he was chewing so hard on his lip that he could taste the coppery tang of blood.

he flipped the phone open. he slammed the phone shut. he did this a few times, his other hand dropping into the pocket of his sweatshirt. the note was tucked away in there. he’d kept it on his person since he’d come home monday evening, careful to keep himself between it and diana. diana, who was sleeping, oblivious, above him.

he rubbed the note between his fingers, slowing his bouncing leg. he conjured the rush of excitement that had rolled through his body when the pair had strode through the office door and lived it again. then, he flipped his phone open one last time, and began navigating to compose a new message.

he typed the number into the address bar, lingering over each digit, trying to be absolutely sure of each one. he stared down at the screen for a long while before he even started to craft the body of the message, which turned out to be just _i’m the guy from the office._

he hit send, and slapped his phone shut.

the vibrations would’ve surprised him no matter when they came, sooner or later. he nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone buzzed in his hand less than a minute later. _thought you’d never text, was starting to lose hope,_ the screen said.

grady had to be careful. rationally, he knew he had to be careful. but grady was often irrational, had a bad, storied habit of irrationality and impulsiveness, and he was hitting send on a text that said _hope?_ before he could think about it twice.

_thought you weren’t interested. seemed too good for me anyway,_ the next text said.

_what?_ grady thought. _interest in ???_ he said.

_dont play hard to get,_ the next text said. it was immediately followed by another: _played that game long enough last time. bad results. was looking for something simpler._

grady idly wondered what happened to that guy. if anything happened at all. but he didn’t lend much credence to those thoughts, because he knew, at that point, that the guy wasn’t going to kill him. he was no less wary, though, but some of the fear fell away. the last thing he’d expected to happen to him in his slow, suffocating locked-groove life was getting hit on by some kind of rough-hewn hired muscle. his eyes fell past his phone, settling on the dull gleam of his wedding band. he felt the phantom crunch of glass under his foot.

_simple how?_ he texted.

_only in town for a week. depends on your coworker. just want to fuck around & blow off steam. _

grady closed his phone and set it on his lap. he stuck his thumb nail between his teeth and chewed. how would it be any different from all the other hookups? the johns, the peters, the davids. it wouldn’t be any different. not really. not at all. it would be the same infidelity it always was. the only exception was that this time, they hadn’t met under the haze of alcohol.

_it’s because he threatened horowitz_ , grady thought. _get over yourself. maybe that asshole deserved it._

_everyone is dangerous,_ grady thought. _get over yourself._

he picked his phone back up, and he flipped it open.

 

**vii.**

 

the motel room had two beds.

it wasn’t a long drive. it was reminiscent of his commute, which made sense, what with the horowitz business. it was twenty-five minutes before grady was pulling into the parking lot of a motel whose neon sign was dead in a few places, so that instead of _cozy stay motel_ , it read _y say motel._

wrench - and that was his name, apparently, _wrench_ ; or, at least, it was the name he’d given to grady - ushered grady through the door after grady texted him _i’m here_. he kept a hand on grady, fingers lingering on his arm as he closed and bolted the door. he turned back to grady, a boyish grin on his face. grady eyed the beds over his shoulder and couldn’t help but ask _where’s your brother?_

wrench’s smile fell. he was suddenly transfixed by grady in an entirely different way, all the heat extinguished in his eyes. he held grady’s gaze as he brought his hands up to ask _you sign?_

grady decided then that he didn’t like wrench looking at him. he had green eyes, clear and bright and absolutely disarming. grady felt exposed, naked, even as he stood before him fully clothed, and he shivered to think what it would be like when he actually was naked, if the night went to plan.

grady nodded, and very consciously decided not to elaborate. his ring was in his car, locked away in his glove box, and if his ring finger was free, so was he.

wrench’s grin returned, broader than before. _don’t worry about him,_ he said. _he won’t bother us._ and wrench must have been especially pleased by that, because he crowded grady up against the wall and leaned down, and gave him a kiss, and grady didn’t stop him. even though it was his habit to do so. and god, was it heavenly.

_no kissing,_ grady said after.

_okay,_ wrench said. _anything else?_

_no,_ grady said. _anything goes._

 

grady had to pull wrench from his neck by the hair at one point, having forgotten to mention - _no marks,_ he said, chastising himself for forgetting. he still ended up with one, given to him by wrench before grady realized. a dark little blossom right on his collarbone that he could hide with ease.

_can i see you again tomorrow?_ wrench said after. grady had tried to roll out of bed to start to get dressed right after he’d caught his breath, but wrench had tugged him back into the blankets and held him for a while. just laid there and held him. and what was grady supposed to do, stop him? so he let wrench hold him, let wrench stroke his side.

wrench was a strangely intimate lover. he fucked grady on his back, face-to-face, and nuzzled his neck the whole time, biting and sucking until grady made him stop. he touched grady, didn’t get off until he saw grady come. it left grady breathless.

_i don’t know,_ grady said. he slipped his t-shirt back on. _you want to see me again?_

wrench nodded.

grady allowed himself to try a smile, small and uncertain. _i don’t think tomorrow is good,_ he said. _day after?_

_okay,_ wrench said, falling forward and nuzzling grady’s neck again.

grady gently pushed him back. _you’re soft for a guy whose glare could curdle milk,_ he said.

wrench shrugged. _even the devil needs a day off,_ he said.

_are you the devil?_ grady said.

wrench shrugged again, and then he hushed him with a slender finger to his lips, accompanied by a soft hiss. grady swallowed hard and watched wrench watch his adam’s apple. _why can’t i kiss him,_ grady thought, _it’s not like i save my mouth for diana._

grady finished putting his clothes back on and wrench threw on the sweatpants he’d been wearing when grady arrived so he could see him off. when grady opened the motel room door, wrench’s brother stood on the other side, a key in his hand hovering at doorknob height. they regarded each other with surprise before wrench’s brother’s face settled into a glare, just like the one grady had seen the day before. he looked between grady and his half-naked brother before shouldering his way past them, grunting as he went.

_bye,_ grady said.

wrench gave a loose wave.

grady walked down to his car. the windshield and the parking lot were both coated in a thin blanket of snow. he glanced down at his burner in his hand. 3 AM, it said.

grady woke up late.

 

**vii.**

 

“are we doing anything tomorrow?”

grady looked up from the newspaper he was half-reading. diana was sitting across from him at the table, her hand caressing a mug.

_tomorrow_ was thursday, and thursday was their fifth wedding anniversary. grady wasn’t sentimental about it, and he hadn’t been since their first. but still every year he bought her a bouquet and took her out to eat at a nice restaurant. it was one of the few times a year he actually felt like the man he had been when he married her.

“i don’t know,” grady said, faking like he was clueless. “are we?”

diana just barely smiled at him, her dark little eyes crinkling. “you’re a bad faker,” she said. they both knew that too well.

grady smiled a bit in return. he thought about tomorrow, and what he said to wrench the night before: _day after_.

they sat at their kitchen table, diana sipping her tea while grady read the paper and the microwave whirred in the background, and slowly they began to talk about the day. they even laughed together.

 

**viii.**

 

diana was beautiful. she really was.

for as long as grady had known her, she’d worn her hair long. it was dark and curled just so at the ends, and she always wore it neatly pulled back. she had little dark eyes and a robust nose and thin, elegant wrists. she was beautiful, outside and in, and that made it all worse. grady didn’t hate her. not at all, not even a little bit. he had never hated her. and hating her would’ve made it easier to do what he did and live with it.

he opened the car door for her and offered his hand like a real gentleman. she took it and stepped out. she was wearing a modest maroon shift dress, her hair loose around her shoulders, a glittering hairclip twisted over her temple.

“why so formal?” she said, accepting his arm when he offered it.

grady shrugged. “you deserve special treatment,” he said, though no amount of nice dinners or bouquets or silver necklaces or milkshakes would ever make up for what he’d done to her, the things she didn’t even know about, and what he would continue to do. he felt a pang in his heart, an ache in his head as they walked through the restaurant’s doors and were seated.

after an appetizer, diana leaned forward and said “grady, i want to talk.”

grady knew from her tone, from the way she leaned forward over the candle in the center of the table, that it was going to be serious. it would probably end in same kind of disagreement, or insult, or something else ugly like tears. but still he feigned ignorance and, after a sip of wine, said “about what?” like he was innocent.

she stared at him. “about us,” she said.

“what about us?”

“you know... don’t act like you don’t know, grady.” _you’re a bad faker._

so he couldn’t pretend, couldn’t begin to consider pretending. not with the hard tone she affected. trying to speak with a hard finality, he said “i told you, i’m not ready.” he leaned back in his seat, squeezing his napkin in his fist. “didn’t i ask you to wait until we both turned thirty anyway, diana?”

the corners of her mouth drew down into a sad, severe frown, but anger simmered in her eyes. “grady, i’m gonna be thirty in two months,” she said. “you’ll be thirty in november. it’s sooner than you think, and i’m… sick of waiting.”

they stared at each other, both frowning. diana was holding the edge of the tablecloth in her fist, like grady with his napkin. he drew his eyebrows low over his eyes, and sat straight in his seat. “why does this mean so much to you?” he said. her eyebrows drew together as if in worry. “huh? you know. what, marry some dick, work a 9-to-5, pump out a kid? is that your… thing?”

“what are you talking about?” she said, incredulous. “grady - some people live just fine like that. people are happy to live like that, i want to live like that. and you said that i could, but if you’re so over it, why are we even here? huh?”

it stung. it stung just like it always did, the realization that grady’s life was nothing. just like millions of others. he would’ve thought he’d be over that by now, since he was already so jaded. instead of answering her, he said “i don’t want kids” for what felt like the hundredth time in his life.

“you’re an asshole,” diana said. “why? last time you promised that if we waited - is it me? do you not want kids because of me?”

the fire in her eyes had been doused. now, she just looked sad and pathetic, tears teetering on the edge of her waterline. you’re a bad man, the little voice in grady’s mind whispered to him. a bad, bad man.

grady had spent the bulk of their early years listening to diana while she cried and cried, holding her while she whispered “i’m not good enough, i’m not good enough.” it was everything: school, her looks, her work. he told her _no, you’re wonderful, you’re brilliant, you’re beautiful_ time and again. he wasn’t lying. he still wasn’t. but loving someone and being in love with someone were often very different things, and only after he was in too deep did grady realize that he’d confused them.

“is it - ?” and she cradled her ear, where her hearing aid sat snug. she blinked, and her tears skipped down her cheeks.

“jesus! diana, no!” he said, loud enough that the tables closest to them looked at him. “i learned asl for you, diana. jesus.

“no, diana,” grady said, “it’s me. it’s always me.”

diana shed a few spare tears. she got weepy when she was mad, which grady felt for because he was the same. it had led to two decades of teasing from both his siblings and his classmates. “grady the cry-baby!” they would shriek, which eventually just became “grady-baby,” a name that could fill him with white-hot rage to this day. she looked at him, teary-eyed, before she grabbed her wine glass with force and downed it in one gulp.

“grady. you can’t hide behind that,” she said. “you know, you always say it’s you. but you never do anything to fix it. so it’s a little hard for me to believe that, after all this time, it’s just you.”

their entrées arrived then, and though grady had been starving when he ordered the restaurant’s fancy-ass chicken pot pie, he found himself unable to eat. and so he spent the time trying not to watch diana demurely pick at her dinner while his grew cold in front of him.

she had been excited for dessert before they left, and so had he - a sweet tooth was another thing they shared - but they left without any.

 

**ix.**

 

_i want you._

grady texted wrench once diana was asleep. he was sitting on the rickety basement stairs once more, jiggling his leg.

wrench never replied. grady sat on the basement stairs clutching his burner for two hours before he tucked it away and went to sleep wound up, worn down, and achingly hungry.


	3. chapter three.

**x.**

 

grady all but threw himself down the basement stairs once diana left the house in the morning.

he fumbled with the filing cabinet drawer for a moment before he jerked it open, and he grabbed his burner and flipped it open only to see the plain, default blue screen staring back at him blankly. empty.

  
  


**xi.**

 

every day

  
  


**xii.**

 

was

  
  


**xiii.**

 

the same again.

  
  


**xiv.**

 

until they weren’t, again.

  
  


**xvi.**

 

grady didn’t see wrench’s face again until friday, when he and his brother threw open the office door with such force, the glass cracked, and the office was silent once more.

wrench walked right past grady’s cubicle, his eyes so dark it was alarming, his brow so low and heavy it nearly cast a shadow. but wrench’s brother looked right at grady, face twisted in a snarl, and grady shrank in his seat.

there was a dull thud and soft, hurried footsteps from the corner of the office - from philip horowitz’s corner of the office. wrench and his brother didn’t break pace, though, still calmly striding back toward him, weaving through the desks and ficuses and copy machines until they finally disappeared behind a support beam and a line of cubicles.

horowitz yelped.

grady’s coworkers anxiously, skittishly, awkwardly glanced around the room at each other. grady kept his eyes sitting just over the top of his cubicle. he couldn’t see anything. but he waited.

there was the sound of flesh-on-flesh, a strike, maybe, and something hard falling to the ground. maybe it was horowitz’s chair, falling to the wayside as its occupant was forced to his feet - grady heard the unmistakable sound of shoes shuffling against the cheap carpet of their office, sounded like less of a walk and more of a drag - and made to move.

grady could feel glynnis and richard and martha and lucille tense on either side of him. the front half of the office seemed to draw in a single breath together, waiting to see the twin brutes drag philip past on the way out. would he be bloody? would he be scared? ...would he even be conscious?

the sound of shuffling feet carried on in the back corner. it never seemed to get any closer, and as the sound of the rear exit door slowly creaking and clicking shut echoed through the silent office, grady realized why.

the office let out its shared breath as soon as the door clicked back into place, though it was no less tense. after a moment, everyone slid back into their roles - calculating, computing. grady glanced around at them and realized, not for the first time, that they were all zombies, that they were all dead. _and i’m one of them,_ he thought while he stared at glynnis, who stared blankly at her computer before she finally looked back at him. her eyes were empty, and the hair on the back of grady’s neck stood straight up.

grady threw himself to his feet with such force, his chair fell to the ground behind him and made such a loud bang that it drew every eye in the office to him, standing there before his cubicle, breath coming too quick. he tried not to think about is as he moved, all their dead eyes following him, slowly inching out of their heads. he drew into himself as their eyes and teeth dislodged and crept toward him. he grabbed his coat from the coat rack and swung it over his shoulders before throwing open the door and running down the hallway, away from the teeth and eyes stretching after him. he ran toward the stairwell.

grady took the stairs two at a time until he narrowly avoided slipping off a step in his impractical fucking loafers and breaking his head open on the concrete landing. he settled, then, for throttling himself down the stairs as fast as possible until he found himself at the door of the bottom level, the end of the line - the parking garage.

grady was sweating, and not just from nearly vaulting six flights of stairs. his face was hot. his brain felt like it was on fire. _what the fuck are you doing?_ he thought, reason finally breaking through the heavy fog he’d fallen under fast and hard. _what are you doing?_ he tried to rattle himself from the inside, tried to scream without sound. _what am i doing?_

he broke from his reverie, finally crashed back into reality, upon hearing a shout - high, pained - through the door. he could faintly, distantly see a flash of fringe flying through the window set into the door, and suddenly the adrenaline fell out of his body and he was instead filled with fear. the fear, the terror, paralyzed him completely, and had him rooted to his spot in the stairwell, standing in plain sight behind the parking garage door. _this isn’t some guy you met at the club,_ he whispered in his mind. another shout bounced off the cavernous walls of the parking garage. _he’s dangerous. he’s gonna kill horowitz._

in the back of his mind, an even smaller voice said _grady, how can he kill something that’s already dead?_

there was another shout, just like the two before it.

grady took a step backward, eyes still laser-focused on the little window. he couldn’t see anything, not wrench or his brother or even horowitz. he could just barely see the edge of his car in the distance, half-hidden by a support beam. he squinted, and saw a bit of movement.

a moment later, he heard a car start, and soon after that he heard the squeal of tires as it tore out of the garage. he breathed slowly through his nose and fell back against the stairs. he closed his eyes and pressed a palm against his chest; his heart was throbbing so hard he thought it might just leap out of his chest and take off. he sat there with his hand on his heart until his heartbeat slowly evened out.

grady decided that he couldn’t go back up to the office, not after storming out the way he did. he felt around in his pocket and rejoiced when his fingers brushed his keys. he stood and shoved open the door and stalked across the parking garage.

he didn’t notice the note tucked under his wipers until he was behind the wheel, staring at it through his windshield. his heart almost immediately began to hammer again.

he resettled in his seat with the note in his hand. it had a rough edge, like it was torn from a notebook. it was yellow paper, and it was lined in blue, and grady ran his fingers across the loopy letters once before he read it.

_motel, 11 tonight, x wrench_ it said.

grady crushed it in his hand and pressed the knuckles of his closed fist to his chest.

  
  


**xvii.**

 

_coming out tonight?_ the text said. it was the same every few nights - coming out tonight? coming out tonight?

_no,_ grady said.

_whyy?_ the text said. _u havent come in weeks._

grady leaned back in his seat behind the wheel of his car. he was sitting in the parking lot of the cozy stay motel, facing the room he knew wrench was sharing with his brother. it was 10:56.

he could only lie, which was ironic, considering he was so bad at it, after all.

_diana,_ he said before he slapped his burner closed and threw open the glove box to toss it in. he touched his wedding band, rubbed along it once before he twisted it off and threw it in after the phone. he took a moment then to close his eyes, tipping his head back as he carefully began to cleanse his mind of diana, carefully folding memories and guilt and self-hatred into boxes before he cut himself loose. it worked almost half the time.

when he opened his eyes again, he was already at the door, and it was opening, and there was wrench drawing him in, blood spatter across both cheeks.


	4. chapter four.

**xviii.**

 

wrench fucked grady on his back again, folding him up and pressing in. he didn’t kiss grady, but he pressed their foreheads together and closed his eyes. grady stared at the blood on his face the whole time, right up until he came with a stifled, shameful grunt, dragging his nails across wrench’s back.

wrench, gentleman he was, ushered grady off to the bathroom and cleaned both of them off. grady let him; he felt like he was in an awful, thick haze. he heard the thumps from the corner of the office, the shrieks in the parking garage…

grady was sitting on the bed and wrench was trying to offer him coffee when he said “did you kill him.” it jumped out of his mouth. wrench was looking right at him. he couldn’t pretend like he hadn’t said anything.

_what did you say?_ wrench said, looking unconcerned. he took his coffee and perched next to grady on the bed. he took a long swig of his coffee. just the smell of it was able to quell some of grady’s nerves. some people had the smell of cotton or newly-washed sheets or their mother’s perfume. grady had coffee and cigarette smoke. he loosened his spine some, tried to release some tension.

_nothing,_ grady said.

_that’s not true,_ wrench said nonchalantly after setting his mug down on the nightstand. they were both still naked, bare thighs touching. _you asked about him._

grady tried to turn his head - after all, if they weren’t looking at each other, they couldn’t talk - but wrench grabbed him around his jaw with one strong, scary-firm hand and forced grady to look at him. grady let out a minute grunt, and wrench’s hand tensed. grady didn’t want to look wrench in the eyes. he was already naked and exposed enough. so he dropped his eyes to wrench’s cheeks, but he didn’t like what he found there, either: blood still fanned across wrench’s nose and cheeks like macabre little freckles.

_he didn’t give us a choice,_ wrench managed with one hand before he forced their mouths together, teeth crashing and snagging. grady closed his eyes and allowed it.

  
  


**xix.**

 

after, grady, because he didn’t know when to quit, said _so he’s dead?_

wrench stared at him. _i only talk about work with my brother,_ he said. he dragged his eyes obscenely up and down grady’s body. grady recoiled, curling his leg toward his abdomen, trying to preserve what he thought was his dignity when, in reality, he had none. _and you’re not him._ he turned away from grady then, feeling around on the floor for his boxers while grady sat cold and naked in a crater of blankets.

grady watched him redress. he tugged his jeans back on, fixed his belt. he put his t-shirt, which was faded and had a few holes worn into the collar, back on. he left the flannel he'd been wearing on the floor, but he picked up his fringed jacket and hung it up on the coat hanger near the door.

_are you gonna put your clothes back on?_ wrench said, strangely distant. since the first time, he’d been bizarrely touchy-feely and familiar in a way that made his sudden standoffishness, the sudden darkness in his eyes, and guarded body language almost completely alien to grady. _can’t stay here._

grady bowed his head and unfolded himself from his spot on the bed. he kept his head down, partly so he could scan the floor for his clothes and partly out of discomfort. he found his underwear, shirt and pants in one pile and put them back on.

just as he shrugged his shirt back onto his shoulders, wrench stepped forward and grabbed each side firmly, tugging grady into his chest. he began slowly doing up the buttons, starting at the bottom and working his way up to grady’s collar. it was a strange echo of what happened earlier that night, wrench’s hands deftly undoing each button. grady studied wrench’s face as he worked, his eyelashes and his eyebrows and his nose, purposefully trying to avoid his cheeks. when he made it to the final button, right under grady’s chin, grady gently pulled his hand away by the wrist with a shake of his head. the top button choked him like no other. _thanks,_ he said, and wes nodded.

they stood there, weirdly close. grady looked at wrench’s throat and wrench looked at grady.

grady felt a tickle after a moment and looked to the side. wrench’s hand was trailing up his arm, coming to rest on his shoulder. wrench then gave him a kiss - a soft, gentle kiss that was over before grady could pull away and say _no kissing._

_i won’t be around for a while,_ wrench said, and there seemed to be a genuine sadness in his eyes.

_okay,_ grady said.

_can i - ?_ he asked, and made a motion like an embrace. grady was about to say yes, but the door flew open suddenly and smacked against the wall, and standing in the frame was hammer, wrench’s brother.

wrench, whose back was to the door, threw him a disinterested glance over his shoulder before drawing back from grady. hammer glared at grady over his brother’s shoulder, and grady felt like he was in a lion’s den.

wrench walked him the few steps to the door, and grady left.

  
  


**xx.**

 

grady was tired driving home, wedding band replaced on his finger. the streets were wet and empty, the glow of orange streetlights bouncing off the pavement. he sat alone at a stoplight for three whole minutes, the red light painting his face. like blood.

wrench was a dangerous man. that much was obvious - painfully obvious from the moment he walked into the office. he’d worn horowitz’s blood on his face while he fucked grady, rubbed it into his neck. wrench could probably kill grady without blinking. maybe he would kill grady.

grady swallowed hard.

no, wrench wouldn’t kill him. he called killing horowitz _work,_ and as far as grady knew, he wasn’t work. he was pleasure - “even the devil needs a day off.” _but you don’t know what his_ work _is,_ the little voice said in grady’s mind. _maybe you’ll be work someday after all._

“shut up,” grady said alone in his car. “stoppit.”

_be careful,_ the little voice said. _you don’t know him._

“shut up,” grady mumbled again as the light finally flashed green and he drove, alone, through the cold drizzle that had begun to fall again.

  
  


grady didn’t notice diana until the kitchen light flickered on as he passed. his heart nearly stopped when he was suddenly washed in the blue-bright fluorescent light of their kitchen. he felt his body thrum with nerves, and his heart hammered insistently in his chest. his head swam.

she was sitting demurely at the table, a throw blanket wrapped around her shoulders. she was wearing a sweater and pajama shorts, and her ears were empty. she looked tired. she looked sad. they stared at each other.

_where were you?_ diana said, eventually.

_with sherwood,_ grady said without hesitation.

diana sighed. _did you have to wait until i was asleep to sneak out like that?_ she said.

_it was an emergency,_ grady said. he felt ashamed, getting caught and throwing out his only friend’s name like that. he felt ashamed of the dull ache in his ass, and he imagined his body glowing red everywhere that wrench had touched him or put his tongue.

diana’s face shifted from sad to alarmed, and that only made it worse. she had such a kind heart and, not for the first time, grady resolved to never tell her the truth, ever. how could he? her perfect heart and her temperate demeanor would shatter in an instant. _is everything okay?_ she said.

_it’s fine,_ grady said, _guy broke up with him._ it wasn’t much of a stretch, to be fair. sherwood did have a well-documented habit of calling grady after a breakup to have him partake in vodka and a late night living room showing of boogie nights so that he could heal himself with the sight of mark wahlberg’s prosthetic penis. “guys come and go,” sherwood would say around the bottle, “but marky mark is always there for me.”

diana looked weary, but her shoulders loosened and the air between them became limp.

_when is he gonna settle down?_ she said. _he’s thirty._

_who knows,_ grady said. _who cares,_ he thought. and he decided then to make it up to poor, oblivious sherwood tomorrow by telling him everything. everything except the murder part. he couldn’t keep it all locked away much longer. everyday, he felt a little bit like he could explode, bursting into a million pieces. he waved diana off to bed, insisting that he needed to sit down with a glass of water before he joined her. his throat was dry, and his head was aching.

he took a sleeping pill.


	5. chapter five.

**xxi.**

 

“so,” sherwood said, “you’re finally having an affair.”

grady scrubbed his face with his palm. “i guess so, yeah,” he said. “if i see him again, then. yeah.”

the bar was loud. the patrons and the music fought to stay above the volume of the other. it was giving grady a low-simmering headache. sherwood leaned in even closer as he spoke: “you _want_ to see him again?”

grady breathed hard out of his mouth and brought his shoulders in, shielding himself. he stuck his hands between his thighs, completing his defensive curl. “yeah, i do,” he said.

“‘cause, you know, you sounded all… i dunno, freaked out on the phone, man,” sherwood said. he snorted. “so his dick is _that_ good, huh?”

“shut the fuck up,” grady growled from between his raised shoulders. the bar had a wide-open floorplan but he felt like the walls were closing in on him a bit.

sherwood laughed. “so - he _doesn’t_ have a nice dick. noted,” he said, taking a swig of his beer. “so what? money? are you a sugar baby now, or something? or what, he’s really hot but got a lousy dick? or, wait. you a top now?”

“just - jesus, shut the fuck up, sherwood,” grady said, glaring at him. “no. no, he…” and he sipped at his beer, wincing as it went down wrong. “he has a great dick, and he’s handsome, but - ”

“ _handsome,_ he says.”

“ - i just don’t know what i’m doing. what i’m gonna do.”

“well,” sherwood said, leaning back in his chair a bit. grady followed so he wouldn’t have to strain to hear him. “you said he was only around on business. and he’s gone now, so do you even really have to do anything?”

grady took a moment to consider the bar: familiar, pink and dark. they never came here to hookup, but the clientele was mostly the same anyway. he looked from the low ceiling to the glassware behind the bartender, reflecting the garish overhead lights. he looked at the almost abstract paintings scattered across the walls, all angular forms and strong striking colors.

he looked at sherwood, his oldest friend. his only friend. his scruffy chin, his misplaced nose, rearranged courtesy of some guy with a tribal tattoo they had the misfortune of meeting the first night they ever went out together. the bags under his eyes were as dark and heavy as ever, and he looked uncharacteristically haphazard in his t-shirt and flannel. _flannel…_ grady thought of touching wrench’s arm before tugging his shirt up and off.

“yeah,” grady said eventually, “i do, because he said he wanted to see me again.”

sherwood snorted again. “of course he does,” he said. “everyone always wants to see pretty grady again.”

“s’at supposed to mean?” grady said.

“every guy always mentions you when i go alone,” sherwood said. “you’re a hot commodity, guy.”

“well,” grady said, “is it that much of a compliment when you’re a commodity in hell.”

sherwood laughed, loud and sharp and doglike. “you’re such an asshole.”

later, after two more beers, they stood in the parking lot near their cars, which were parked side by side. before leaving, they each lit a cigarette, sharing the flame from grady’s lighter.

“grady,” sherwood said from his spot perched on grady’s trunk. grady looked at him, taking his eyes off the high-speed lights of the passing cars. “grady, jokes aside, you gonna be okay? i mean, you did sound all freaked out on the phone yesterday.”

grady suddenly didn’t want his cigarette. he let it drop, half-smoked, from his lips to the ground at his feet. he stamped it out. “i’ll be fine, i just. you know,” he said, moving to stand beside sherwood.

“no?” sherwood said. “i mean, he’s not dangerous or anything, right?” he forced a chuckle, but in his eyes grady could see the genuine worry that he had the misfortune of knowing too well. he’d given grady that same look in the bathroom right before he married diana.

though grady wanted so badly to grab sherwood by the shoulders and say _he murdered phil fuckin’ horowitz, what the fuck do i do_ he kept his hands at his sides and opted for the best worst fake smile he could muster. he tried to laugh, too. “no,” he said. “he’s not dangerous.” _he’s lethal._

_...but i feel so alive when i’m with him._

  


**xxii.**

 

grady didn’t see the text until almost two full days after it was delivered.

wednesday night, he wandered down to the basement after waking up confused and sweaty and hazy on the couch. there was nothing from sherwood, but there was a message from a too-familiar number in his place. _mondays,_ it said in lowercase letters.

grady was awake immediately, and he sat himself down on the rickety basement stairs. _mondays?_ he thought. _what?_

it was becoming all too commonplace for grady to sit on his basement stairs staring down at his janky piece-of-shit burner at some message sent by wrench. wrench, a man who could probably rip him apart with barely a blink. wrench, a man who made his insides a warm jelly. _mondays,_ he thought as he looked down at the word on the dim screen. _yeah?_ he eventually texted back.

grady’s phone buzzed less than a minute later.

 _hate em,_ it said.

 _is that it?_ grady thought. _am i talking to fucking garfield?_ he felt disarmed, just like when they first had sex and wrench patiently led grady to his orgasm first. disarmed like when they first hooked up and wrench smiled at him when he watched him sign. grady bit his lip staring down at his burner. _me too, garfield,_ he replied. _i hate my job,_ he threw in for good measure.

 _me too,_ wrench said.

and so it began.

grady would end up staying awake for an extra hour texting wrench. the next day, against his better judgement, he took his burner to work with him. he didn’t really have anyone or anything to watch out for there; as far as his coworkers knew, he had no interior life at all, unless they caught sight of the ring on his finger. and even then, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

they began texting each other daily. it was mostly plain, conversational messages. grady didn’t want to stick his nose where it didn’t belong, and he didn’t know wrench well enough - hell, he barely knew him at all - to know what would or wouldn’t set him off. so he kept it light, and more often than not he let wrench lead the conversation with questions. grady suddenly caught himself smiling more.

grady sat on the basement stairs one night at nearly two in the morning, one hand wrapped around a lukewarm mug of hastily microwaved hot chocolate. he wanted coffee, but that would’ve kept him wired for hours, and so hot chocolate was the closest he could get. it filled him with warmth from his stomach to the tips of his fingers, and he would be set to fall lump-like into bed in no time at all, but for the time being, he had his cellphone in his hand, and he had wrench.

 _love jewish weddings though,_ he said, _fun as fuck. you wasps don’t know how to party._

 _never been to one,_ wrench said. _seen fiddler on the roof, but that was before we had a tv w captions._

_shit movie. hate musicals._

_why?_

grady stuck his tongue out, blissfully aware that he was alone and there was no one around to catch him doing that. _just singing out of nowhere, no reason. and the music always sounds shitty. its obnoxious._

_wouldn’t know. :)_

grady laughed a little, a low, small huff. _be thankful. my mom was a rogers & hammerstein fan._

grady was sitting on the stairs the next night as well. instead of hot chocolate, beside him sat a half-empty bottle of vodka, a bottle of kahlua and their jug of milk. in his hand was his glass. this time, he’d brought a throw pillow with him, and he laid against it.

 _what kind of things do u say?_ wrench said.

grady was buzzed, mind just on the right side of foggy. his face felt flush and warm. he smiled despite the embarrassment that tugged at him and the slight arousal that was coiled tight and low in his belly. _just talk to myself about whats happening,_ he said. after a moment, he added: _i dont feel ok w most guys so i dont usually do it._

 _why?_ wrench said.

_why wat?_

_why don’t you feel ok?_

grady worried his lip before taking a sip of his drink. _theyr just hookups. i don’t know them and i dont need them to just start laughin at me. i barely get off w them anyway._

_is it that bad?_

_no!! just doesnf feel right calling myself a dumb slut and having a jerk laugh & say oh so i can call u a dumb slut too and i have to say no fuck u and then i really don’t get off._

_you could do that w me. i wouldn’t mind._

grady’s buzz was suddenly gone, and he was painfully lucid. he squirmed to right himself from his slouching position, and the phone vibrated again in his hand.

_next time we’re together._

_next time,_ grady thought. _when?_ and he imagined it: the cool night time breeze roiling through his windows as he drove down the highway toward some motel somewhere. wrench greeting him silently at the door with that surprisingly sweet, impish smile of his. grady let his eyes close, and across his eyelids his dreams played out in vivid color. wrench running his hands down his arms, rubbing at his belly. nuzzling his neck in lieu of a kiss.

 _i couldn’t,_ grady said. _too embarrassing. even w you._ and a moment later: _i should go to bed._

_ok._

_ok,_ because that was how they’d been saying goodnight, if they said it at all: by not saying it.

grady laid in bed next to his wife after putting everything away, righting everything: the drinks in the fridge and in the cabinet, the pillow back on the couch. he stared at her long dark hair, pooling on the pillow under her head. he traced her shoulder gently with a finger. he fell asleep remembering the last time they had sex, and how he’d had to keep his eyes closed nearly the whole time in order to retain the illusion of a gentle-handed man touching him in place of her.

  


**xxiii.**

 

_so what are you gonna do?_

grady was locked in his mother’s upstairs bathroom, wedged between the toilet and the tub, clutching his burner phone. he could hear his nieces and nephews squealing in the living room under him. he heard his sister yelling after them.

_i’m going to suck your dick til you’re at the very edge, then i’ll finger you until u cry._

grady’s body shook with a heavy shiver. he was getting to be almost painfully hard, but he couldn’t bring himself to jerk off in his mother’s perfect pink bathroom. he pressed the heel of his palm against his groin, trying to relieve some of the pressure by rutting against himself just a little, but that only made it worse.

 _and??_ he managed with one thumb.

_and then i’ll fuck you just the way u like._

the knock at the bathroom door had grady almost jumping out of his skin. he stared at the pink door, still in its frame, as if he could see through it. “y-yeah?” he said.

“grady?” came the soft voice of his wife. “everything okay?”

 _no,_ grady thought. heart pounding and blood thrumming in his veins, he said “yeah. just, my stomach’s upset.”

“oh… is it bad?”

“no! no. i’ll be fine.”

“should we leave?”

“no, just - ! eat dessert, di, i’ll be right there.”

“please. i can’t take another minute of lawrence and maggie’s vacation slideshow. at least, not alone.”

grady would’ve laughed if he could. diana always had such a good sense of humor. but he couldn’t - not while he was half-hard and tucked between the matching pink porcelain of the toilet and tub. he listened to her shuffle away and finally he pulled his phone from where he’d protectively tucked it against his chest. there was a new message waiting for him, and it occurred to him that he missed the vibrations against his chest thanks to his hammering heart.

_after you cum i’ll lick u clean & hold you until you’re ready for more._

grady turned off his burner. he extricated himself from his spot on the floor and straightened himself back out. he flushed the toilet and washed his hands, then tucked his burner safely into his jacket pocket, folding the jacket under his arm as he left the bathroom.

“everything alright?” his mother said as he entered the kitchen. diana was sitting at the island with a half-eaten slice of cake. it looked delicious, all fluffy icing. grady’s stomach lurched - he so wanted a piece - but he couldn’t bring himself to eat if he tried. he felt deeply sick, sick with shame and sick with disgust for himself.

“right as rain, ma,” grady said. “but tired as hell. diana?”

his mother rolled her eyes. “the _children_ stay out longer than you two,” she quipped.

as they drove home, radio filling the silence between them, grady imagined wrench’s hand on his hand, his hand between his thighs. he looked at diana out of the corner of his eye and felt that sickness churning his stomach again. his fantasies continued unbidden: wrench touching his face, touching his neck. grasping his neck. choking him, killing him. grady clutched the gearshift. holding him, like he said he would.

“grady?”

diana was so gentle, grady didn’t even feel her fingers on her wrist until he glanced down and saw them there. he barely heard her voice, but it managed to cut through his stupor and suspend his sickness. he looked between her and the road. “yeah?” he said.

“you just had this look,” she said, “like you saw a ghost.”

“no,” grady said, trying to affect that _aw, shucks_ half-chuckle he saved for moments like this, moments when he really needed to sell a lie, which seemed to almost be the bulk of his moments anymore. “no, just. it’s. just thought i saw something. like, a frog.”

grady could tell that she didn’t believe him. but to her credit, she didn’t say anything.

when they made it home to their dark, empty apartment, diana stopped grady just inside the door. she pressed him against the wall with her body, long and slight, and looked at him. her eyes, big and dark, cut through him. she closed them, and then she kissed him. he kissed her back. her hands rested on his chest, just barely touching, like her fingers on his wrist in the car. he let his arms hang at his sides.

“can we - ?” diana said, making it plain on her face. he felt her grab one of his hands by the wrist and tug it toward her, toward her pelvis. in an instant, grady was reliving the first time they had sex: hasty, breathless, quick. all laughter. all smiles.

the memories were like splinters piercing him as he slowly shook his head, yanking his hand back and saying “di, i’m - i’m so tired tonight.”

“okay,” she said, taking a step back. her voice was husky and watery and not okay at all. “okay.”

diana turned away from him, removing her hearing aids like one might pluck earrings from their ears. she stalked back toward their bedroom, disappearing behind the door. after a moment of standing there, waiting, grady heard the click of the lock.

  


**xxiv.**

 

_...and hold you until you’re ready for more._

grady stared down at his cell standing next to the old filing cabinet in the basement. he leaned against it while he looked. he felt the urge to reply, say something awkward before he went to curl up on the couch and fall asleep. but he couldn’t. his thumbs stayed stationery, half-curled over the keyboard until he turned the cell off again with a sigh, replacing it in the top drawer.

the couch wasn’t uncomfortable. it was plush, the kind you could sink into. after bundling himself in their spare comforter and two fleece blankets, it was almost like he was laying in bed. almost.

after laying awake for half an hour, staring up at their awful popcorn ceiling, grady tentatively crossed his arms over his chest, wrapping himself in a hug. he closed his eyes, and tried to imagine it was wrench.

 _and hold you_ echoed quietly in his head as he fell asleep.


	6. chapter six.

**xxv.**

 

the music throbbed around grady. he took a sip of his fruity pink drink, absently twirling the swizzle stick with his finger. the lights flashed purple and red on the dancefloor. he ran a hand down his front, smoothing out the fitted t-shirt he wore under his jacket.

he hadn’t heard from wrench in a week. a long, jagged week. he sent him a text the morning after he promised to hold grady, a simple _sorry, got sidetracked,_ but he received nothing in return. he felt hollow without wrench texting him, his phantom presence lurking in every facet of grady's life. he felt that awful emptiness filling his gut when he looked up from his computer at work and looked around at his coworkers, all just husks.

when sherwood sent him three question marks that evening, grady didn’t hesitate.

grady glanced around, eyes jumping from face to face looking for sherwood. he’d excused himself five minutes ago for the bathroom, but he hadn’t returned. grady hoped he hadn’t met someone in there. if he had, grady would be stuck paying for both their drinks. even worse, he’d be left alone, and even just five minutes with himself and his thoughts was proving to be too much.

 _should just line every guy up and have them fuck me one by one,_ grady thought, sipping his drink. it was a sweaty, disgusting image. _maybe my brain would short-circuit. leak out my ears. never think again._

grady wondered what wrench was doing. he was doing that a lot anymore, wondering about wrench. he wondered about everything: what he was doing, who he was with, if he was wondering about grady too. if he was killing someone. if someone’s blood was on his face. if he was fucking someone else, making them feel good. grady desperately wanted to know wrench. he wanted to know what he wore besides that tasseled jacket, he wanted to know who he spent his time with, what he ate for dinner. how he felt when he took someone’s life. _do you think about this?_ grady thought as he drained his glass. _no, you don’t._

 _i’m just some good fuck in a nowhere town you breezed through,_ he thought. _you could just stop here and have me whenever it works for you. and i wouldn’t care, as long as i could pretend to know you for as long as it took to come. fucking hell._

 _where’s sherwood?_ he thought, looking around again. when grady arrived, sherwood was already one drink deep. it was an electric blue thing in a curvy glass. grady climbed into the stool beside him and immediately said “what did you mean the other day?”

“hello, sherwood, nice to see you. oh, you are looking very sexy tonight.”

“yeah, yeah, sexy, whatever.”

“which day? and what’d i say?” sherwood said. “you know how this mouth of mine tends to run away from me.”

“thing about guys wanting to see me. that, uh - the whole hot commodity thing.”

sherwood had shrugged and drank more of his blue potion. “guys like you,” he said. “you don’t want anything. you just take it and go. y’know. no strings, that kinda bullshit.”

no strings.

sherwood had to be fucking around in the bathroom. there was no way he wasn’t.

grady cleared his throat and wiped his hands on his pants. he slid off his stool and threw some bills down on the bar, enough for both himself and sherwood. then, he walked into the crowd.  


 

grady and diana were married for a year and a half before he cheated on her for the first time. the guy, mousy-haired and long-limbed, worked in the offices on the fifth floor of grady’s building. a fire broke out in their kitchen one day, and every office was evacuated. after an hour of waiting around in the parking lot, grady found himself being kissed within an inch of his life around the corner of the building, tucked between topiaries.

after that, it took another few months before grady did it again. he hooked up with sherwood, the both of them drunk and hazy. it felt just like old times. another few months later and grady was haunting bars alongside his friend, looking for something - someone - different to get drunk on.

things changed since those first few times. grady didn’t let strange men kiss him anymore. he always kept his back to them, and he only picked guys up when he went out with sherwood in tow. and he always, always saw diana’s face when he closed his eyes, even after he stopped feeling guilty for it.

grady stalked through the crowd, looking from face to face and turning his eyes away when their eyes and teeth started to reach for him. he searched until his eyes fell upon a man in the corner who sent panic straight into his stomach before he blinked and realized he wasn’t looking at wrench. just a poor imitation.

grady approached, and when not-wrench’s teeth stayed in his mouth, eyes in their sockets, he pounced.

 _where are you?_ grady thought when not-wrench pressed him roughly against the brick exterior of the club. _how do i find you?_

the guy wasn’t even half as good as wrench was. grady only managed to come by roughly tugging at himself, grinding his cheek into the brick and thinking of the last time they were together, a vision that had been playing on loop in his memory. he tried to feel what he felt then: the roughness of wrench’s flannel shirt, his jeans, his muttonchops and stubbly chin against grady’s neck. his breath, hot and wet, on his face. his fingertips on grady’s belly.

“you fucking idiot,” grady managed under his breath before he came. he closed his eyes and saw diana as he’d seen her that day: sitting at her vanity hooking a little silver necklace around her slender neck. and then he saw wrench, stalking out of the office, glaring down at grady.

“will i see you around?” not-wrench said behind grady after they fixed themselves up. his voice was the worst part of it all. not-wrench had instantly shattered the illusion when he first opened his mouth. grady winced as he fixed his jacket, but he put on a smile as he turned back toward not-wrench.

“maybe in your dreams, buddy,” he said, and walked back toward the entrance.

  


**xxvi.**

 

it was saturday. diana was visiting her sister, and the sabbath only mattered to grady when he could use it to his advantage, so he was sitting in front of their shared computer and trying to google _are hitmen real._ google returned the wikipedia article for contract killing. grady read it top to bottom and poked around some of the notable cases.

“fucking mafia,” he said, scrolling down the list.

grady, because he had a lot of good ideas and jumped at the chance to act on them, scurried down to the basement where his burner sat quiet, waiting for him.

_you kill people for money._

it took longer than usual for grady to regret his impulsiveness. usually it ate at him right away, a gnawing at his conscience. but this time, he only regretted it when his phone buzzed with a reply moments later, a message with a palpable steeliness: _yes._

that small, sensible part of grady screamed in his mind to put the phone away and lock the basement forever, to forget wrench and quit his job and move to montreal with diana. grady, however, wasn’t very sensible at all and so he asked the only thing that really mattered to him, in the end: _are you dangerous?_

_not to you._

grady heaved a slow, quaking sigh, perching himself on top of the dryer.

 _i miss you_ came from wrench barely a moment later.

  


_where do you go when you’re gone??_

_work. or i’m with my brother._

_does he know?_

_i never hid it._

_do you think about me?_

_too much._

  


_when do i get to see u again?_

_the next job is bringing us thru._

_shit when?_

_a month._

_where r you?_

_north dakota._

_oh thats not far._

_don’t get any ideas._

  


_so you think about me?_

_yeah._

_why??_

_is that a real question_

_absolutely. i’m self centered._

_good to know._

_so why?_

_were you even there last time we saw each other?_

  


**xxvii.**

 

a month. grady could wait that long. he could go to work, drive home, sleep next to diana and suffer through thursday dinners for a month, especially with the light at the end of the tunnel so close and so bright.

 _you can do this,_ grady thought as he laid prostrate in bed that night. _you can do this._

  


**xxviii.**

 

grady wasn’t sure if he could do it.

“what do you mean you want to see a counselor?” he said, standing in the kitchen doorway, hands on his hips, all his weight on one foot. diana stood with her back to him, noisily washing dishes. it was a wonder she heard him between the loud clink of dishes on dishes and the rush of the water.

“i don’t _want_ to, grady,” she said, “i’m _going to._ we’re going to. cecelia has a friend - ”

“oh, i bet cecelia has a friend.”

“ - cecelia has a friend and she’s a counselor and we’re going and that’s final,” she said as she turned the water off. she turned toward him and leaned against the sink. there was a fierceness in her eyes that grady was all too familiar with that let him know she was serious. that she wasn’t going to back down. “i’m sick of you acting like there’s nothing wrong with us, grady. i ask you all the time and you act like it’s nothing and there’s clearly something wrong. when was the last time we had sex?”

“sex isn’t the most important part of a relationship, di,” grady tried, but diana was having none of it.

“okay!” she said, exploding. “if you wanna use that line, go ahead. okay. so, sex isn’t the most important thing here. what else is there then, hm? how about… communication? when was the last time we communicated, grady? dinner doesn’t count, picking out a show to watch doesn’t count either, and asking you to put the laundry in the dryer absolutely doesn’t count. so we’re shit out of luck there too.”

grady was at a loss. he kept himself on the offensive: aggressive stance, firm brow, mouth corners turned down. he crossed his arms. “so, diana, if i’m not ‘communicating’ with you,” he said, affecting air quotes, “what makes you think i will with some hack with a meaningless job?”

diana seemed to meet her threshold her. she unwound a bit, shoulders slumping, as if all the fight had suddenly left her. she sounded desperate when she spoke. “grady, please go with me,” she said. “please? just once. grady, i love you.”

grady felt as though he had been shot.

“i want to get through this, whatever this is. i want to have a family with you.”

grady felt as though he had been stabbed.

“i just don’t know what’s wrong lately, you know?” diana was crying now, huge tears sliding down her cheeks. “i just - i just… i just.”

“diana, shh,” grady mumbled, tucking her between his arms and under his chin. despite her anger, she let him cradle her. he felt his shirt dampen as she cried. “i’ll go. we’ll go. it’s fine. it’s fine, di.”

“i want it to be like it was,” she sobbed into his chest. “i miss you.”

 _i never went anywhere,_ grady thought.

 _yes you did,_ the cruel voice in his head hissed back at him. he saw the hands of every man that touched him, felt their mouths on his neck, his shoulders. he felt the dirty ground, the roughness of brick, the slimy bathroom tiles. he remembered driving to wrench’s motel, driving to sherwood’s place, driving to every bar and club that sherwood texted him. he remembered sitting at the table with diana, blankly watching her sign and imagining he was somewhere else. he remembered marrying her. he remembered everything he did, and he found that he wasn’t quite sorry for it. he wasn’t sorry for any of it. he was only sorry for diana, who had gotten caught in the middle of it all.

they went to bed together for the first time in a long time, and grady held diana until they were both asleep.

the next day, they made their appointment.


	7. chapter seven.

**xxix.**

 

the counselor smiled at them both. “how have you two been?” she said in her slow, droning voice.

it was their second session. the first had mostly been paperwork and introducing themselves to one another, and teaching the counselor - marybeth - the history of their marriage, which led to grady feeling dead inside as he and diana recounted every date, every kiss and coy look, that led them to marybeth’s couch. he couldn’t help but lock himself in their bathroom once they got home, having been seized by some mysterious, stomach-rocking sickness that he knew was just guilt in disguise.

diana smiled politely and said “just fine” even though it wasn’t true. after their first session, after grady expelled whatever phantom sickness he’d fallen under, they’d fought again. they yelled at each other until they were both crying. grady slept on the couch again after spending a few hours texting wrench about everything and nothing, trying to bring himself back down.

“grady?” marybeth said, looking at him. she had big, sad eyes and thick eyelashes. like a cow.

he tried to smile. “just fine,” he parroted. he patted diana’s knee.

“so,” mary said, “what do we want to discuss today?”

grady was about to say _whatever you think would be constructive_ or some other compliant bullshit, but diana beat him to it. “intimacy,” she said with a sideways glance at him. “can we talk about intimacy?”

_intimacy,_ grady thought. _intimacy…_

_ “oh, fuck,” grady sighed, “oh - fuck.” _

_ wrench was biting the insides of his thighs - no need to chide him, no one was seeing that anytime soon - and fingering him slow and methodical. sometimes his mouth drifted up to grady’s dick and he would place suckling kisses from the top of it back down to his thighs. _

_ “ugh, your fingers...” grady mumbled into his palm. he was covering his mouth, trying to stifle the awful noises he was making. he, for a brief moment, had a lapse in thought and imagined that diana was here to see him: shameless, wanton, terrible. and then wrench’s mouth was around his dick and he forgot all about diana. _

“i’m no sex therapist,” marybeth said. grady blinked, surfacing from the memory of himself and wrench the way they were last, together and naked and _intimate._ marybeth was smiling impishly as if it were the punchline to some kind of joke that only she knew. “but we could absolutely discuss that. diana, what is it about… _intimacy_ that you’d like to talk about?”

diana took a deep breath beside grady. he felt an annoyance simmering hot and low within him. he stared at her, trying not to glare, and waited as she gathered her words.

“there is none. no intimacy,” diana said. “i feel like it’s emblematic of where our relationship has gone.”

“can you describe the lack of intimacy, diana?” marybeth said.

“there’s no sex,” diana said bluntly. she sounded so loud and disruptive to grady even though he knew her voice was barely above a high whisper. it was like she was screaming. “when i try, he… runs away. or he just says no. and when there is, there’s no… it feels like we’re just. it doesn’t feel like anything.”

diana looked at grady. he recognized the look - that sad, guilty little stare of hers, and his breath caught in his throat as he realized what she was going to tell marybeth. he wanted to grab her, wanted to stop her - grab her by the throat and shake and shout at her to shut her fucking mouth, and as soon as he had those thoughts he felt dirty and wrong and disgusted with himself.

“once, and this was almost a year ago, we were trying to have sex and he just started crying. because he - he couldn’t, or he didn’t, he wasn’t,” diana stumbled. she swallowed. “wasn’t erect.”

grady felt like he was in the middle of a cavernous, dark room filled with people he couldn’t see. he felt like there was a spotlight shining on him, and all those people in the shadows were pointing and laughing at him. _look at the fucking fool!_ they laughed. _he can’t fuck his wife without crying like a fa - !_

“grady,” marybeth said. grady snapped out of his dark, mortifying reverie and looked at her. her mouth was pinched into a sympathetic frown. “grady, i know you’re young but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. many younger men struggle with erectile dysfunction. in fact, this is an - ”

“it’s not - it’s not,” grady did his _aw, shucks_ good boy chuckle and tried to smile. he imagined himself ripping her office apart, tearing the books from the shelves and hurling the framed certificates to the ground, and it helped to calm him a little. “doctor, it’s not e-erectile dysfunction.”

“it’s not,” diana said beside him. grady looked at her. she was sitting ramrod straight, face heavy, eyes heavy. grady’s neck was hot. what does she know? he thought. what does she think she knows? “it’s different, marybeth. it feels different. it feels… psychological.”

“hm!” marybeth said, sitting back a bit. her forehead was creased. “how do you mean?”

diana opened and closed her mouth. “i… don’t know,” she said.

“grady,” marybeth said, “do you have any input? this is a safe place. we can talk here.”

grady looked at marybeth, and then he looked at diana. diana, his… his wife. his friend. the stranger that slept in his bed. _no,_ the little voice inside him said, _you’re the stranger. you’re the ghost._ you _haunt_ her. he looked at marybeth again, who was sitting forward in her seat, lips pursed, waiting. grady glanced out the window, which looked out onto a lovely view of the brick exterior of the autozone next door.

“i don’t know,” he echoed.

  
  


**xxx.**

 

“so she’s just sitting there insinuating that my dick doesn’t work, like i’m fuckin’ broken, you know? i still don’t think she believes me.”

“maybe she wants to fuck your wife. does she look like a lesbian?”

“no,” grady said, sighing heavily. he nestled deeper into his jacket, or tried to. they were sitting on sherwood’s balcony despite the cold, each with a cigarette in hand. it was cramped and looked out over the sweeping parking lot of his apartment complex. it was littered with cigarette butts, an old coffee can overflowing in the corner. grady meant to give him shit about it, but he got too caught up in the dramatics of his own life. “just looks like - like someone’s mom. she’s got, uh, this hair - small hair. she has these creepy tribal masks hanging in her office. pictures of kids and a dog.”

sherwood scratched his chin. “hm. tell di you don’t feel comfortable talking to a gentile woman about your kvetching and shit, or whatever,” he said. he pronounced _kvetching_ with a flourish, waving his hand limply and vaguely. almost like he was bored.

“that wouldn’t work,” grady said. he stubbed his cigarette out on the railing and let the nub fall to the concrete under their feet. sherwood paid it no mind, which grady thought was a little unusual. sherwood was always trying to jump on his back over something. “i don’t even feel comfortable kvetching to you.”

“shut up already,” sherwood said flatly, little amusement in his voice. “talk to your man lately?”

grady scrubbed at his face. “every day,” he said. “if you must know.” it felt like he talked to wrench more than diana. he did talk to wrench more than diana, and about things that were real. not just about errands or appointments or bills or...

“oh, i must,” sherwood said in that same flat tone. “every day? more than you talk to me. unless you’re trying to _kvetch._ ”

“whatever,” grady said.

they sat silently for a moment before sherwood opened his big fucking mouth again.

“so what’s happening there?”

“what? nothing. we talk. we send dirty messages. i jerk off alone in the bathroom like i’m twelve again.”

sherwood flicked his cigarette over the railing, into the night. grady watched the cherry divebomb into the bushes beneath them. “you’ve got it made,” he said.

grady chewed his lip. “he’s coming around soon,” he said.

“oh yeah?”

grady nodded.

“gonna get that dick?”

“yeah,” grady conceded. he didn’t care to pearl-clutch over his friend’s perverted bluntness. he was tired, he had a headache. he wanted to get drunk - more than anything - but he had work in the morning and diana expected him home. besides, he couldn’t afford a car wreck if he drove drunk.

he looked over at sherwood and found that he was staring at him. grady raised an eyebrow - _what are you looking at?_ \- and sherwood shook his head. “i don’t understand you,” he said. “you’re obviously fucking miserable. why don’t you just come clean to your poor sweet wife and get a divorce?”

grady felt exposed. like his flesh had been stripped off. a little breathless, he said “i can’t.”

“it’s not 1980 anymore, grady,” sherwood said. his voice had a rough edge to it, a grit that grady was familiar with. he was pissed. “your parents are fucking unbearable but they’re not conservatives. if you really wanted to you could just fucking come out and get a divorce and she would be free to finally get what she fucking wants and you would be free to be the slut you already are but you wouldn’t be, y’know, hurting anyone anymore.”

“fuck you,” grady said because he couldn’t say anything else. sherwood was right. grady had thought it over every which way since he married diana. the only reason he was staying was because he was so comfortable in his own misery, and too stubborn to admit he was wrong - that he hadn’t fallen in love with diana. at night he laid awake in bed and thought about it, and even then with the world silent he could barely admit it to himself, could barely bring himself to think it.

“fuck yourself, babe,” sherwood said. “get outta my sight.”

grady stood up so fast and so suddenly the plastic chair he’d been folded on fell. “funny that you’re so righteous all of the sudden, ellis,” he said, pouring all the venom he had into sherwood’s name, “when you fucked me without a second thought four years ago and said fine when i asked you to take me with you when you went to the red fucking rabbit. you were her friend before you were mine and _you_ kissed _me_ on our wedding day. you’re a fucking enabler. don’t act like you’re above this.”

“i hope you get chla-fuckin’-mydia from this guy’s dirty cock,” sherwood said. he looked right up at grady, jaw tense and mouth set. “now get. out. of my sight.”

grady kicked the overflowing can of cigarettes so hard, it ricocheted off the railing and hit sherwood in the shin. butts and ashes were everywhere. sherwood didn’t wince, or yell. he merely watched grady with a heavy contempt.

grady did 60 the whole way home, radio volume as high as it could climb.

  
  


**xxxi.**

 

_ how much longer? _

_ needy boy. we stopped for gas. an hour. _

_ i cant wait. _

_ you have to. _

_ tonight, right?? _

_ midnight. like u said. _

_ i can’t wait. _

_ i know. _

  
  


**xxxii.**

 

the motel room door was open as soon as grady stepped up to it.

once again wrench and hammer were posted up at the cozy stay motel, in the exact same room, the same two beds. when grady pulled up, the memories rushed him: wrench leaving his number on grady’s monitor, the pair of them dragging horowitz away, wrench stepping aside to let grady into the same room he stood before now, wrench fucking him, and fucking him, and fucking him.

grady tried to step inside but wrench blocked him by stepping in the way. _can you drive?_ he said suddenly. _i’ve been driving all day._

grady was on alert. he felt the back of his neck get hot, he felt all of his limbs stiffen. _drive where?_ he said.

_i want to take you somewhere,_ wrench said. _surprise. is that okay?_ there was an earnest look on his face, one that almost calmed grady.

_no, you’re a fucking murderer,_ grady thought, as if he hadn’t been alone with wrench enough now, alone and exposed. who cared if he was alone with wrench again, somewhere else? _he could be leading you to some empty plot where you have to dig your own grave,_ he shouted at himself.

grady smiled nervously. _yeah, fine,_ he said.

wrench smiled back. he caressed grady’s face and stroked his cheek with his thumb for a warm, fleeting moment before he slammed the door behind him. grady flinched at the noise and the muffled shout that came from behind it. _besides,_ he said, _he’s mad at me._

_why?_ grady said. they started for the exit.

_because of you,_ wrench said.

_me?_ grady said.

_he’s my older brother,_ wrench said, _and he never took too well to me being gay. but i live with him and his girlfriend, and i get lonely._

wrench, bloody-knuckled, remorseless, killer-for-hire wrench, was lonely. it made sense to grady immediately - he imagined he would be lonely if his life was anything like wrench’s. most nights when they texted, it seemed as if he was always on some job, or else sitting at home, “doing nothing,” as he would say, “just thinking of you.” just reading. just sitting in front of the tv. and it struck grady, because he realized that was what his life had come to as well. sitting in front of the tv, falling asleep watching glue documentaries on pbs, going to work and eating a gray, flavorless lunch, and thinking always of wrench.

grady sat in the driver’s seat. wrench, all six feet of him, took up the passenger’s side. _where to?_ grady said.

_just turn when i tell you,_ wrench said, half-smiling back at him.

and so grady navigated out of the parking lot and into the night.

  
  


wrench directed him to an empty stretch of road with a considerable amount of shoulder. _here,_ he said as they came upon it. grady pulled off and there they sat, car vibrating around them. _cut the engine._ grady did so.

wrench shrugged. _now we walk,_ he said.

a hot sweat broke out on the back of grady’s neck and across his shoulders, under his shirt. he looked out the window at the dark trees around them, at the heavy, dark sky and all the stars. _out here?_ he said.

wrench grinned his strangely sweet, boyish grin. it put grady on edge and at ease in equal parts. _you’re safe,_ he said, and grady felt sick to his stomach. _am i?_ he thought, the ragged beating of his heart wracking his frame. he realized then that having an affair with a hitman was probably a bad fucking idea.

grady could barely disguise his shaking as he hit the release on his seatbelt and got out of the car. he couldn’t make it around to the passenger’s side. he braced himself against the side of the car and bent in half, just barely containing his heavy breaths. he felt like he might get sick, it felt like his stomach was empty, it felt like it was too full. he heard the crunch of gravel under boots and felt wrench’s hands on his arms. grady managed to look up at him and saw that he looked absolutely horrified.

_what’s wrong?_ he asked, taking a hand off grady.

grady just shook his head and held his stomach. he felt five again, standing in the carpeted hallway of his mother's house on the precipice of spewing sick.   


wrench opened the back seat and guided grady inside. grady sat, thankful. he’d felt as if his legs were going to give out. wrench knelt in the wet gravel before him, watching. he rubbed at grady’s knees. they sat that way for a few moments.

_what’s wrong?_ wrench said again, after grady’s breathing slowed to a manageable pace.

grady looked at wrench. he looked so… human. so normal. he looked up at grady like he really cared what was wrong, like he was concerned, like he was scared. _the banality of evil,_ a forgotten history teacher whispered in grady’s memory. grady looked at his knees, where wrench was resting his fingertips. he gently touched one of wrench’s fingers.

_are you going to kill me?_ he said.

_i told you,_ wrench said, _i’m dangerous, but not to you._

_i thought you were going to make me drive somewhere so you could make me dig my own grave,_ grady said.

_no!_ wrench said, eyes wide. _just come with me. that’s not it._

grady bit his bottom lip hard, just to feel it. it was so cold - he just wanted to feel something. he stared down at wrench. he looked so humble kneeling before grady and looking up at him. like a knight before a king, or something. he just barely managed to sign _okay._

wrench led grady by the hand through the snow-laden trees. grady liked the way their hands felt together. they didn’t walk for long - soon they were stepping into a clearing where the wreckage of a house stood. it looked dark and imposing and spooky. grady looked at wrench.

wrench let go of his hand and walked onto the rotted porch. there were cans and glass bottles scattered around the clearing and across the porch - beer bottles and soda bottles. wrench picked a few up and lined them up on the railing. grady inclined his head. _what are you doing?_ he thought.

wrench stepped off the porch once he lined up five dark bottles. he reached under his coat and pulled out a gun. immediately grady thought back to digging his own grave, to laying dead in the middle of nowhere. despite his panic, he tried to use wrench’s words to placate himself: _i’m not dangerous to you, i’m not dangerous to you, i’m not dangerous to you…_

_you said you’ve never shot a gun,_ wrench said. _when we were talking the other day._

grady’s panicked, gruesome thoughts halted. he remembered the conversation well - he remembered all of their conversations well. he hung on every word from wrench. he asked about shooting, and wrench told him a story light on details about how their father used to take the both of them hunting for small game. grady said “the closest i’ve ever come to shooting a gun was this arcade game i used to play with my brother.”

_i thought i could show you,_ wrench said. _after he kicked us out._

_is this a date?_ grady thought. _am i on a date with this guy?_ he felt his face get hot. he couldn’t help but smile uneasily at wrench and say _okay._

grady stood a few feet away from the porch. wrench folded himself around him: he stood behind grady and held his arm, his hand. he steadied grady as he stood there with the gun, small and heavy and foreign. he dropped his nose into grady’s hair and breathed and grady felt like he was in a romantic comedy or something. wrench guided his hand until it lined up with the furthest bottle, and they pulled the trigger together.

the shot made the air crackle. grady’s ears were ringing. he stared at where the bottle once was. all that stood in its place was the shattered base, jagged and dangerous. his heart was pumping fast. he was hyperaware of wrench around him. he felt wrench’s nose move against the top of his head, and then his mouth - he was kissing grady’s head as he nudged grady back into position and took aim at the next bottle.

“holy fuck,” grady mumbled as the next bottle burst. glass flew everywhere. they shot every bottle, one by one. wrench pecked the top of his head after every bottle. by the time they finished, grady was hard and wanting, and exhilarated.

he walked out of wrench’s hold and shakily made for the porch, where there were more abandoned bottles. he tried to mind the shards in the dark as he gathered more. he felt a hand on his shoulder and there was wrench, an amused look on his face. _what are you doing?_ he said.

grady carefully set down the bundle of bottles he’d gathered. _i want to do it again,_ he said. _maybe without your help._

wrench laughed. it was so startling that grady jumped. it was the first time he’d heard wrench laugh, the first time he heard much of anything from wrench, and it was charming. _okay, greenhorn,_ he said. he picked up the bottles grady had collected and walked past him, clearing away the shattered remnants of the last few and setting up the new set.

wrench stood off to the side while grady took his gun and aimed it at the middle bottle. he pulled the trigger, and instead of making the bottle shatter, it bypassed it completely and cut a perfect circle into the wall of the house behind it. off to the side, he heard wrench chuckling again. he tried again, bang, and the bullet sailed into the wall behind the bottle. he felt like he just had a bucket of water dumped on him, cutting his excitement and killing his erection, and then he felt wrench’s hands, his arms around him again. with his hand over grady’s, he steadied the gun and aimed and pulled the trigger and the bottle exploded.

_i’ve never met anyone so green,_ wrench said when they finished. he was looking at grady fondly, which only scared him when he actually thought about the implications that the look carried with it. there was a little smile on his face and his eyes were soft and calm and unguarded. _you have teeth like a rabbit._

“what the fuck?” grady said, taken aback.

wrench laughed again. it was a sound that grady liked. a sound he could get used to. he imagined it for a minute, laying in bed with wrench, nowhere near naked, and making him laugh. laying under blankets and sharing a bed in more ways than one. grady didn’t quite realize he was smiling too, and that they were smiling at each other in the middle of a forest, before a derelict old house, and that grady had a gun in his hand. he felt his heart flutter.

  
  


**xxxiii.**

 

“did we have a good week?” the counselor said, looking between grady and diana.

grady thought of shooting bottles in the forest with wrench and laughing uproariously and all the heavy petting they did in the backseat of grady’s car afterward. he barely held back a smile. “it was fine,” he said.

“fine,” diana said, none the wiser.

“alright, that’s good! now - let’s begin…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been a minute! i can't read this anymore. take it.


End file.
